


waiting for sunrise

by tealmoon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cults, Blood, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Drowning, Eldritch, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Murder, Old Gods, Self-Harm, found family but not in a good way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-05 14:18:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15172532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealmoon/pseuds/tealmoon
Summary: It was hard, trying to help the Monsters get to the surface, but Frisk and their new friends would help in any way they could!Or: brief snapshots in the lives of a group of cultists trying to raise something almost forgotten.





	1. Chapter 1

They had the feeling that the people who ran concerts had never dealt with something like this before. The managers and the sound crew and all the other people with jobs Frisk couldn’t guess at all looked harried, hurrying back and forth but not really doing much.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Mettaton said, leading them back to the dressing room. “The show will go on. These are professionals, even if they’re being a bit silly at the moment. You’d think the directions I gave would have been obvious.”

Another sign that they were out of their depth: the dressing room (which was huge, like a fancy hotel room) was soon crowded with delivery workers bringing food Mettaton couldn’t eat. (They clung to his side until the room was clear, disliking the sideways glances they were getting.) He may not have looked like a real robot, like the ones online, but he was metal, right? A kind of metal that moved like a person, but still metal; he echoed when Frisk knocked on him and didn’t mind.

“Oh, don’t sit on your hands, darling. I got this for you.” Mettaton swept an overlong arm over the table. “The concert’s going to last well into the night, and I don’t want you neglected. Look, isn’t this nice? They brought the edible glitter I asked for. It’ll look like you’re eating stars!” Sprinkling silvery blue glitter onto a pizza slice seemed a little odd to Frisk, but that was just how Mettaton was. Everything shining and pretty, all the time.

“Here, you have your dinner while I check on the sound setup. It needs to be very particular; can’t go disappointing all those fans.” With a chilly kiss to their forehead, Mettaton swept out of the room, leaving them to stare at enough food for a week, not knowing where to begin. Pizza was fine, even glittery, but was that an actual steak in a takeout box? Someone had packed a steak knife in the bag with it, and just looking made their hands itch.

Think of all the things they could do with that knife. To themself, to the people running around outside. To the world. Would that make Mom happy? Would that help?

 _No_. Maybe they were a bad child for thinking it, possibly the worst, but their arms were still covered with hardened scabs, and they were running out of room for more. Just one night to themself. Mom and Dad would understand; one night was nothing to them. Right?

Was there any way to get rid of it? As much as they wanted to drop it out a window, someone might get hurt, and touching the knife just to move it away could lead to... accidents. But they couldn’t just leave it there, shining on the table, something weird and dark moving in the reflection in the metal, even though it was a completely still and bright room—

“Pumpkin, you’re not eating. Do I need to call for something different? There’s plenty of time, and I can get it on rush. Whatever you want.” Mettaton came over to their side, and his voice was enough to unfreeze them. They buried their head against his side, the cold metal soothing against their cheek.

“There’s a knife,” they mumbled, pointing. Not wanting to say more, to tell him all the things that could happen. Saying it aloud would make it real.

“Oh. Do you want me to cut your steak for you? Is that it?” His arm began to extend, and he reached over to it.

“No! No, don’t!” Anything else they could have said was overpowered by a round of crying, and they pulled away—couldn’t get Mettaton all snotty when he was about to do a concert. What sort of terrible friend were they? But they couldn’t let it get any closer. Something terrible would happen.

“Shhh, shhhhhhh.” Out of him, the shushing was mostly static, but it was still somehow comforting. “Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll fix it.” Despite how calm he sounded, Mettaton looked freaked out, and they had to wonder how many kids he had ever been around before them.

“Can you, um. Please get rid of the knife? I don’t want the steak, just...”

“That’s fine, sugar. That’s no problem at all.” Mettaton patted them on the head, and then he was scooping up the steak knife and dropping it into a discarded bag. They ducked their head not to look, but from the clattering and shuffling, it sounded like he had found more than one? Or he had gathered up the butter knives too. Mettaton stalked to the door of the dressing room and called out to the first person who passed to get rid of the bag. They must have gone with it, because he strutted back empty-handed.

“Is that better?” They nodded, rubbing at their damp cheeks until he gave them a cloth napkin that looked too expensive to wipe anything with. There was still a clawing, empty pit in their chest, but the knives were gone, and they were safe to eat glitter-dipped cheese fries while Mettaton stroked their head, humming and texting something, probably to the concert people.

Outside, they could hear the crowds of people getting louder and louder, snatches of singing and laughing. Most of them were already there with tents and fold-out chairs when Mettaton and Frisk got to the concert hall, thankfully driving to a side entrance so no one noticed them; the screaming would have been awful. Thousands of people and more arriving with each minute. It was making them antsy, and they weren’t even the one performing.

“I’ll need to go take the stage soon, darling. Let me give you a song, to get my vocals warmed up.” They set aside their fries and tried, unsuccessfully, to wipe the grease and glitter off before squirming into his lap.

Mettaton had held a few concerts, both underground and above, and they had yet to be allowed to go to any of them. Too loud, too crowded, too adult, too past their bedtime, as if he cared about that any other time. There’s something about his performances that he doesn’t want them to see.

But he’ll sing to them privately, so quiet that no one walking by outside would hear. The words don’t make any sense, some language that almost sounds like English if you could just listen hard enough, and by that time, listening so close makes them feel like they’ve dipped their head underwater, all the sounds distorted and far away. It sounds like something people sing in church, and they wondered Mettaton didn’t sing this way to the rest of the world, only them.

And then, they didn’t wonder anything at all, their eyes lolling closed, watching the colors bloom in the dark, so secure in his metal arms, secure in the fact that the future was so close, that Mom and Dad were waking up, that the monsters were coming—

“Ah, did that put you to sleep?” Mettaton helped them sit up and onto the couch. Extending his arm out, he snatched a fresh napkin off the table and dabbed at their upper lip. “My song’s that good, hm?” It wasn’t that much blood, just a dribble, but Mettaton diligently wiped it up anyway. And, like he always did with paper cuts and nosebleeds and skinned knees and wobbly uncertain cuts, he neatly folded the bloody napkin up and tucked it away in a hidden compartment in his wrist. They knew if their nose started bleeding again, they would save it for him.

“It’s nearly time for the show. It’ll be hours, so don’t stay awake too late, okay? Have some snacks, watch your videos.” Nodding, they slipped on the headphones he had bought them, as expensive and noise-canceling as he could find. They could watch all the cartoons and nature videos they wanted, and not even a hint of the concert would bleed through. The world went blissfully silent, and they couldn’t hear Mettaton’s words, though the meaning was obvious: _I love you._

 _I love you too,_ they mouthed back. With a final hug, he was out the door, fifty thousand humans to sing the future to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be a bunch of short, disconnected chapters probably. Feels bad to start a new thing, but... I dunno how this comes off, but I like it, and I don't want to mess it up. 
> 
> Partially based off/mangling the ideas in this post, with permission: https://itsladykit.tumblr.com/post/175193422204


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pair of bony cultists have a beach party with their new friends. Depending on who you ask, it either went wonderfully or terribly.

“Not gonna eat any?” One of the guys asked, burning his fingertips as he pulled a hot dog off its skewer and fumbled it into its bun. For the life of him, Sans couldn’t remember this guy’s name, since he’d been calling these humans “sport” and “buddy” and things like that. It wasn’t worth memorizing them all. “These are amazing; on a grill isn’t the same.”

“Nah, dude. I’m on a diet, you know?” He waved down at his ribcage, bare under his jacket. Honestly, human food grossed him out; how could they willingly eat stuff that would rot in a few weeks or months? It felt bad enough giving the kid that garbage.

“Your loss. We’ve still got another pack if you change your mind.” The human rammed half of the hotdog into his mouth, relish smearing on his lips, and Sans had to look away, staring into the fire.

Aside from his nausea, their secluded little beach party was going pretty damn well: hot dogs and marshmallows over the bonfire, a pair of tinny speakers barely loud enough to dance to, a jug of iced tea that Sans had brought with him. Soon enough they had forgotten all about their spiked sodas and flasks, passing it around. Probably should have made a second batch, from how fast they were burning through it.

It wasn’t the sunniest summer evening, but still warm enough to wade into the ocean. He had any intention of doing that, no salt water for these bones, but Papyrus had waded right in with the humans. The rules were different for him. He didn’t have anything to worry about.

Not exactly a wild orgy of a party, like the bacchanal shit Mettaton got up to, but the humans seemed to be enjoying themselves. So was Papyrus, gathering sea glass and shells with one of the girls.

Over the music, Sans heard her squeak in pain, and Papyrus made appropriate soothing noises. “Oh! You should be more careful with seashell collecting, Miss Nina, it’s a deeply perilous hobby.” Nodding along to the bonfire conversation, he watched Papyrus lead her to the waves, rinsing her hand in the water and making all the appropriate sympathetic noises. She obviously hadn’t noticed the tiny flash of blue light around the shell that had gashed her.

Pap was a gentleman, though. Once he led her back to the others, he healed her hand to the oohs and ahs of the rest of them. Maybe it was weird to think of them as kids, when they all had a good decade on Frisk, but there was something so open and innocent about these humans. The tiniest bit of magic made them crowd around them, eyes shining, and he had the feeling that even the shittiest card trick would get them cheering. The ‘ball under the cup’ trick would probably make someone swoon.

He talked, he made awful jokes that had them kicking sand at him, he kept an eye on the gathering clouds.

“Hey. Hey, Sans!” He looked over at the human guy holding his phone aloft, two of the girls straightening their swimsuits and hair in preparation for a photo. “Get in on this.”

Papyrus called it friendship, but he knew it was novelty that had these kids wanting to take pictures with him, not his photogenic smile. But in the grand scheme of things, a photo was tiny, meaningless. It was enough to make him brush the sand off his swim trunks and head over, standing in between the two of them. A photo was the least he could do, considering.

“It’s not uploading,” he mumbled, once he had gotten the right shot of the three of them, their arms draped over Sans’s bony shoulders. “I was gonna put it on Instagram, but I got an error page?” Sans didn’t need to look to know he was getting a 404 page, probably with half its text not loaded or maybe backwards. Time-stamped photos of exactly where they were and who they were with, well. That would have ended the game faster than anything.

“Tough luck, buddy.” He clapped him on the shoulder, and by now, they were used to him enough that bone on bare skin didn’t register as threatening. “Try again when we get back to town, I guess.”

Papyrus seemed to smell something on the wind that Sans hadn’t picked up yet, and he had gone to the next step. To the humans, it must have seemed casual for him to retrieve a bit of driftwood to trace out designs in the sand, far down enough that the waves could pass over them. But every part of it was calculated: the words he said under his breath, a salt-blessed tool to draw it with, the exact symbols he used. Papyrus was always better at drawing the sigils than Sans was. It was a lot of ‘drawing it out on scratch paper is nigh-sacrilegious, put some effort in and memorize them!’ from his brother, but it never stuck. The Mother’s sigils always came easy to him, but these ones always wavered and dissolved whenever he tried to hold them in mind.

But then the humans started to join in. By the time he was on his third sigil, the waves eating up the first two, he had gained their attention. Soon they were on their feet, looking for twigs. He knew how humans worked, especially young ones, and normally it’d be them writing out their names, drawing cocks, that sort of thing. That they all started following Papyrus’s designs meant that his efforts had caught.

The final image drawn, Papyrus dropped his piece of driftwood, turned towards the ocean, and bellowed out in triumph, his body glimmering with orange. And Sans could claim to be cynical all he wanted, but seeing a finished ritual always gave him the shivers.

Then things got a little wild, as planned.

For most of them, it was easy, the ones who drew with him or drank more of the sea tea, Nina leading them—Papyrus’s magic had that sort of mesmerizing effect. Clinging to each other’s hands or grabbing onto shirts, they walked into the ocean together, eyes glassy, mouths grinning. It reminded him of seeing a group of tiny school children the other month, holding onto a rope so that they wouldn’t get lost as they were led into the city museum.

They were up to their chests in the water when the remaining two snapped out of their confusion. Graceless, splashing up big clouds of seawater, they barreled in after their friends, trying to pull them back. The boy slipped face-first into the waves, but he was soon up, shaking water out of his eyes as he rejoined the silliest, saddest game of tug-of-war. The whole time with Papyrus shouting to them that they were really acting nonsensically, and once they got to know Her, they’d feel absurd that they hadn’t rushed in immediately. The humans weren’t listening, shouting back that he needed to help pull them back in.

It was a loud, chaotic, splashing mess, which was how She usually liked it. Once the enthralled humans realized that their friends were trying to pull them back, their human chain wheeled around to grab at them, hands locking around wrists and dragging them deeper in. Soon it was their shoulders above the waves, then only their heads, and then all of them were gone, eaten up by the water. By now, he had gotten used to it not looking anything like the movies. Once they got that deep, they didn’t have time for screaming or waving for help.

Sans didn’t really think about what happened to the humans that drowned in reverence to the Heartfelt Warrior of the Waters. Maybe enough of them remained afterwards to be able to meet Her. Maybe She’d like the ones that thrashed and fought?

Papyrus stared out into the water, the waves licking at his bare ankles, smiling in contentment long after the last head dipped under the water and didn’t resurface. “That was nice, wasn’t it?”

Nice was one word for it, sure. His bones thrummed with the waves, Her acknowledging his service, but it was right on the edge of invasive. He wasn’t a good enough acolyte to get the warm fuzzies that he got with some of the Others. Papyrus could look to the ocean and see a friend, but all he could think about was that he wanted to get the smell of rotting seaweed out of his skull. All water belonged to Her, technically, which made a guy really contemplate his drink choices, but out of all of it, he liked the ocean the least. Who really knew what was down there?

They stuck around a little while so Papyrus could pray about it, but an expected summer storm soon rolled in. As warm rain doused the bonfire for them, they hurried to clean up: repacking the cooler, shaking sand out of abandoned jackets and sandals, gathering the phones that hadn’t gone unceremoniously into the waves with their owners. Humans had all sorts of tracking devices these days, and it wouldn’t do to leave them there. As tempting as it was to fling them into the water and hope it’d fry them like the others, Papyrus would get on his case for being sloppy.

As Papyrus packed up the car with the humans’ belongings, to be disposed of later, he dismantled the phones, snapping the little cards that the internet told him contained all the identifying features of a phone’s owner. He could dismantle the rest later (what Papyrus would want), or chuck them whole into various trash cans in the city (what he was inclined to do). One of the phones had a glittery purple case, and he wondered if it would fit Frisk’s phone. Wouldn’t be the first thing the kid had gotten off someone dead.

“Sans! We don’t have time for you to dally around and read someone else’s text messages! We promised we’d be home for dinner.”

He had paused on the last phone, the one that... Jake? Dan? Whichever human that had taken that picture of him. It was at the top of his photo album, and Sans looked at it, wondering if he should trash it first. If he destroyed the little phone card, the photos would be deleted anyway, and saving it somehow would be a great way to get caught and pinned for the disappearance of a half dozen young adult humans.

Two grinning, lightly sunburned young women, with college dreams and chipped nail polish and names he couldn’t remember. Hopefully She would treat them well, if there was anything left to treat well. Maybe not.

Deleted information went into the realm of the void, and he bit down on the hope that it would go unnoticed by the things waiting there, as he broke the little chip in half. A hope was a prayer in miniature; better not to feel anything at all about that single photograph of himself grinning uncomfortably between a pair of now-drowned humans. The nothing didn’t need to see that. He had enough empty nightmares as is.

“Saaaaaaans! Don’t dawdle, you’re collecting rain in your skull!” The phones clacked together with each step, screens probably scratching against each other in his shorts pockets as he shuffled his way to the car. Rain was starting to puddle in the sand, images swirling in it, and he dodged them as best he could. Her messages gave him a skull-ache at the best of times.

For fuck’s sake, he had just given the water six bodies, you’d think that would earn him a break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this another one of those 'don't plan, just add on chapters when I feel like it' fics?
> 
> Also, I don't really intend for it to be that skeleton-heavy, not that I've planned that much. I'm still feeling more strongly about Mettaton and Frisk's viewpoint.


End file.
